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  1. Fuck man, don’t cave on the paywall for a teenager over $5. The majority of teenagers can get the parents to pony up that $5 in 2 seconds if they really wanted to. Parents pay stupid $$ for their kids to do all sorts of extra-curricular shit. They wouldn’t bat an eye at $5/month for quality tech ed.

    • Those kids have no reason to look for quality education, having their needs already covered. I had to support myself past 13, my parents couldn’t feed themselves properly, much less me, so I got by through gaining skill by borrowing school’s internet to download programming book PDFs on torrents.

  2. Kids out here talkin ‘bout they don’t have $5 a month but they’re walking around in Jordans with iPhones. So they buy one less dime bag a month, idk, but they’ll figure out some hustle to pay if they really want it.

  3. I would say : No rule without exception

    means if someone makes the effort to contact you and you find his mail convincing, offer a “sponsored access” means free of charge, if things get out of hand you can adjust this policy anytime….

    Just my 2 cents….

    🙂

  4. If the little snots don’t want to pay for valuable IT content that they can learn from, then they can stick with YouTube.

    Udemy offers $10-$15 sales ALL the time, if you’re patient you’ll never have to pay full price for a course there. CBTNuggets and Plurualsight are better alternatives to Udemy with reasonable options on a monthly scale (not sure about CBTNuggets).

    I think $5 is incredibly generous on your part and you’re beating out the pricing offered by all the other viable competitors. You said it perfectly regarding little snots not wanting to invest in themselves. As a former little snot…I had no issues spending $60-$120 on video games.

    $5 is less than the cost of most fast food. $5 is worth 1 or 2 snacks at the corner store. $5 is good for 2-3 vending machine runs at a local school. This kid REALLY means to say he’s so poor he never buys fast food or snacks from the gas station/corner store? He can’t live without these something for a few days or week?

    • You know what $5 is in other countries?? That’s good amount of groceries, or some bills. Even in Canada, 25% exchange “premium” is not that easy to justify. Is it really OK to keep knowledge restrained within USA borders, while increasing the gap with 3rd world countries’s technology education?

      • I do happen to know what $5 comes out to in a few other countries but spending habits are still present even on smaller scales. I can’t deny I’m guilty of it myself and have been plenty times in the past.

        It boils down to how badly you want it. I’m not against gifting a month of free access or rewarding someone access if they meet a set criteria as Ann mentioned. $5, in other currencies or not, is still a lot more attainable than other sites that offer online courses.

        • If comparing to competition, then yes $5 is hugely better than my yearly pluralsight subscription (thankfully had a black friday discount). I did not think about that. Maybe if Eli in his advertisement pitch makes a comparison to his competitors, the value will be clearer.

          On a side note, its strange why Eli always says he cannot compete with those CBT, etc. Yes, viewers are not willing to pay untrusted newcommer to the market. But here, clearly see how he already has/had market trust, already won several competition “battles”. For all we know, those sites sprang up *because* Eli gave up (got bored) early, instead of taking his education platfrom all the way back in the day.

          • I really enjoyed my Pluralsight subscription when I had one. One can easily go down several rabbit holes just exploring the wide variety of course subjects covered.

            I see Eli’s content as being more community driven, what it might lack in comparison is that interaction with the instructor when it comes to answering questions. This is something that is at least offered on Udemy and Pluralsight, though with Udemy the instructor responses vary from course to course. I can see a forum with sub-categories broken down by class name as a possible alternative.

            With the number of classes being offered, that would be a lot of time to spend just monitoring forums for answering questions. The community as a whole might be able to offer a less resource intensive solution.

  5. Here is an idea: give out a couple of free memberships to super motivated kids who truly can’t afford your content. Keep the same business model but make some exceptions so that you don’t feel guilty for charging people who don’t have the means to pay like kids.

    • “…but make some exceptions so that you don’t feel guilty for charging people who don’t have the means to pay like kids.”

      It is not about giving free content to a kid, it is about giving yourself a cheap option not to feel guilty… 😉

      In a business context: Eli spends hours of time on this problem costing at an hourly rate of 100 USD decent money, a free membership costs him 0.001 cents or so and makes him feel good because of helping a poor kid….

      🙂

  6. My thoughts about the topic.
    The people that can’t afford payment will not pay, as those who don’t want to pay. Who will pay? Maybe those who need the service and regular to pay for the things that they need. Somebody like me will pay in a condition that service will be provided. My pay for failedNormal it is payment for inspiration. I can see Eli and others doing things, and it easier for me to kick myself in doing.

    What about other site, what services will be provided? Is it comparable with Udemy? Is it comparable with CBTNuggets and Plurualsight? You decide for yourself. It looks like couple of things missing.
    Content – missing advanced topics (Does this point required elaboration?)
    Answering question – that is must when you doing some kind of courses. (It exist on Udemy, it seems that I saw it on CBTNugget, not sure about Plurualsight)
    Community – does that exist? (It is easier to study when you have study group)

  7. As for as Secular Talk goes, the guy Kyle did a 2-hour live stream and probably made $500 plus. Some guy gave him a super chat of $100, then another guy for $50, then another guy for $50 and another guy for $20. It went on like that all through-out the stream. I watch from secular from time to time. I kind of just wanted to make Eli jealous since he brought him up. But I do not mean anything serious by it.

    • … hey I can’t argue with his success, but I’m a total loss for why he’s doing so well. I used to watch him before commentary became such an overdone thing on YT. He’s good, but… …

  8. I’m just back home from a very stressful 24 hours shift and as usual, I’ll take a look at your vlog before I go to bed. I’m very tired so I will not weigh my words.

    You all should be ashamed of yourselves! The direction of “Eli the computer guy” is now known for almost a week now. That means that this kid really thought well about whether or not he or she should write an email with his story.

    It takes a lot of courage to admit that you can’t afford 5$ per month. Obviously, the parents will not help the kid as well (yet). Whatever the reason may be, it doesn’t matter. The kid is 13 years old. It’s obvious that he or she has no money! When I was 13 years I didn’t have money either and 5£ back then looked as much as 500£ nowadays.

    One thing that the kid does have is a higher IQ than the average IQ of the commenters above. When the kid writes that he went through all the classes… I mean, WOW! This kid has the potential to get a scholarship at MIT and with a bit of luck to graduate as a PhD as well!

    Imagine that he invents the algorithm to entangle a quadrillion of atoms which will lead to the breakthrough of quantum computing. For that accomplishment he wins the “Nobel Prize of Science” and during an interview, he gets the question: Who inspired you the most?” and he answers: “That person was Eli the Computer Guy”.

    Be a good Buddhist once in a while, Eli and give that kid 1-month full access to elithecomputerguy.com. You can make a video about it for YouTube to use it as an example for all the snots there. Maybe a few of them will understand that when you are polite and honest instead of a snarky dumb-dumb, people actually are willing to listen to them.

    Last but not least, It’s Xmas, goddammit! Isn’t it so that Xmas is meant to give something to people that are less fortunate?

  9. Hello Eli, Can’t watch your videos over this platform, it stops all the time and when I replay the video, it stops again and again. Is there anything wrong with this new platform? I have zero problem with YouTube in watching your videos

    • ???? Crappy mobile provider..? Make sure your phone is up to date, and then try watching on a wifi connection. I just tested using my iPhoneSE and the vids come up at a click. I use Vimeo for the backend, maybe your mobile provider has an agreement with YouTube…

  11. Can try scholarship / giveaway / monthly raffle system.
    More work for you though, reviewing applications of why someone thinks they deserve a free account, or set up giveaways.

    Your beginner target audience is by definition not pay-capable, have no purchase power. Even in 20+ age category there are many areas where even minimum wage 7.5/hour job market is saturated. Schools are pumping out thousands of skill-less graduates, and there are only so many McDonalds left to accommodate them. So they look for a place to learn to be able to apply for more skilled jobs, but stumble across paywall -> continue having no skill -> no job -> no purchase power for $5.

    Not to mention exchange rate where $5 is way more significant for currencies where most of your viewers probably are (about $7 in canada, or 300 rubles in russia = 8 loafs of bread, good chunk of grocery budget).

    And back to target audience point, the pay-capable part of your viewers have gained the purchasing power already through this knowledge, so there is no reason to pay for this level of tutorials any more. Something more detailed like Pluralsight is more suitable.

    • I would say for most of the western world 5$ a month should be affordable, lets say about 1 billion people, Eli needs only a couple of thousands, should be doable…..

      I see the target audience with people who want to work in IT or just have an interest in IT, kind of hobby….

      🙂

  12. I would be willing to personally pay for one scholarship. If your infrastructure has the ability to verify that a user watches the content, I would be happy to pony up $5/mo for a kid or whatever. Or even if they don’t…

    And Christ, some people demanding that his parents can pay…. My folks wouldn’t fork over the money for anything that wasn’t their idea. And I’m pretty sure he can’t legally get his own checking account in the US.

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